Latest news with #MSITitan18HX
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Your next iPhone could cost substantially more — Trump threatens 25% tariff
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. President Donald Trump really wants Apple to make iPhones in the United States. Apple attempted to get around the tariffs on goods made in China by moving much of its iPhone manufacturing to India. However, that doesn't appear to be good enough for the President, as he said he would impose "a Tariff of at least 25%" on iPhones made outside of the country. "I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone's that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform (typos included). "If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!" Trump recently posted that he "had a little problem with Tim Cook," in response to the Cupertino-based company moving production to India instead of the U.S. Currently, goods made in India are subject to the 10% import tariff that applies to all countries. This is substantially lower than the 30% tax applied to goods from China. Presumably, if Trump imposes a 25% additional tariff on iPhones imported to the U.S., it would be on top of the 10% already there. He said, "at least," which means the fee to import iPhones could be even higher. There's a lot of uncertainty for Apple about importing iPhones to the U.S. While it might be unrealistic to move all production stateside, it may also be the only way Apple can avoid massive fees — fees that will inevitably be passed onto consumers looking for one of the best iPhones. I pixel-peeped the world's fastest gaming monitor — after testing 610Hz, real-life feels laggy I tested the MSI Titan 18 HX — the power is wild, the price is wilder I played 5 games on the RTX 5060 — is this budget GPU actually enough?
Tom's Guide
19-05-2025
- Tom's Guide
I tested the MSI Titan 18 HX — the power is wild, the price is wilder
MSI, we need to talk. I see a lot of people fawning over the MSI Titan 18 HX — particularly the Dragon Edition Norse Myth model I've been using as my daily driver over the past couple of months. And in the early days, I was one of them. It's hard to ignore the ludicrous levels of performance this machine is capable of, thanks to that pairing of the maxed out Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU, top of the line RTX 5090 GPU, and a bonkers amount of RAM with the highest possible wattage pumped through it all. The frame rates in the latest AAA games cranked up to max are insane. All this comes together in a premium shell with a gorgeous 4K Mini-LED display, a tactile Cherry MX mechanical keyboard and plenty of ports (including blazing fast Thunderbolt 5). On paper, you're ticking the boxes. However, we need some sort of a reality check here. And that reality check is a $5,000 price tag. Oh, and just to add a little more insult to the potential deathblow to your bank balance, that's for the base configuration — the one I have could cost you nearly seven grand! For an astonishing price like that, you deserve perfection. But this ain't it, thanks to fans that sound like your standard jet engine, tinny speakers and a haptic touchpad that is pretty frustrating to use. Then there's my incredibly scientific fun-to-price matrix. How much more PC gaming fun do you actually unlock here for the cost to you? Yes, your games will look their best here, but you can get a near-identical spec from Gigabyte for over $2,000 less — a lower-cost desktop replacement experience. On top of that, with something like a laptop (especially with DLSS 4 AI trickery), you could afford to go for something like a 5080 or even a 5070, save yourself a ton of cash, and even get a better laptop experience as a whole (looking at you, Asus ROG Zephyrus G14). I mean even MSI itself is a little cool on the idea of buying this, as a rep told me the company 'doesn't expect to sell a lot of these.' Don't get me wrong — this is a fun experiment to see just what you can pump out of a gaming laptop in 2025. The test results I'm about to show you are crazy good. But in terms of the choice you make at the store, this is clearly the supercar to lure people into the dealership. It's big, brash, and on paper, the most beastly system I've ever tested. And that is the exact reason why it's not the right choice for a daily driver. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Price From $5,000 Display 18-inch 4K Mini-LED display 120Hz refresh rate CPU Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX GPU Up To Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Memory Up to 96GB DDR5 Storage Up to 6TB Ports 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x SD card slot, 2.5 Gigabit ethernet, 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 2x Thunderbolt 5 Connectivity Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Dimensions 15.9 x 12.1 x 1.3 inches Weight 7.94 pounds Before we sit down for a real chat, let's go through the superhuman performance going on under the hood, as well as a couple of additional elements that make this sound great (on paper). Yep, you've got an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX CPU and RTX 5090 GPU packed in here — combined with a massive amount of DDR5 RAM and a PCIe Gen 5 SSD under the hood. That's all fair and good, but thanks to all the advanced thermal management going on, you're getting a whopping 270W being pumped through this system from that behemoth of a charging bring. And the end result? A level of gaming performance that is sure to make a lot of desktop rigs blush! Game benchmark MSI Titan 18 HX Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 Cyberpunk 2077 1080p ultra preset (no DLSS) 70.64 FPS 68.28 FPS Black Myth: Wukond (1080p cinematic) 59 FPS 57 FS Assassin's Creed Shadows (1080p ver high) 54 FPS 44 FPS But as you already know full well, we test with all the DLSS 4 trickery turned off. The moment you flick the switches on this, you get the frame rates balloon with very minimal impact to latency and the fidelity of the in-game graphics. Every time I see it, I'm always blown away! Oh, and it doesn't stop at just gaming performance. One of the big wins for gaming laptops for me is its ability to be all things to all people — a workhorse by day and perfect for play by night. Well, when you apply these specs to masses of power user multitasking and the most advanced of prosumer and AI workloads, you see just how all these high performance components come together to make this a real stallion of getting things done. Benchmark MSI Titan 18 HX Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 Geekbench 6.4 single-core 3046 3117 Geekbench 6.4 multicore 22082 19553 Geekbench AI ONNX GPU Quantized score 24010 23227 Handbrake (transcoding 4k video to 1080p mm:ss - shorter is better) 01:55 02:16 Complex 4K video timelines in DaVinci Resolve just played instantly at the push of a play button without any rendering requirements. Photoshop neural renders were crushed in just a few seconds. No matter how much in-game path tracing pressure I put on this, it sailed through with no problems. The fans kick up, though, so make sure you pick up a gaming headset to block it out. 4K mini-LED. That's it. That's the bit. …OK fine I'll tell you all about it. This 18-inch display is so OTT that I'm in love. Using mini-LED tech, it's super bright even in direct sunlight, the colors are impressively vivid, and that 120Hz refresh rate is buttery smooth at such a crispy, high resolution. Whether I'm swinging through the vivid concrete jungle of New York in Marvel's Spider-Man, or feeling the fear of the dark, gloomy immersion in Silent Hill 2, this is a truly mesmerizing screen that really enhances any game you throw at it. Laptop Display brightness (average in nits) DCI-P3 color gamut (%) MSI Titan 18 HX 729.8 87.2 Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 429.4 80.6 Plus, add in the color accuracy, and I felt just as confident throwing my entire creative workload through here – knowing that whatever I put my heart and soul into; from RAW photo edits to 4K color grading, the on-screen results are correct to what you all would see. And thanks to that HDR support, contrast-heavy TV shows like the depths of Severance truly make that artificial light glow. For any purpose you throw at it, this screen is a beaut. So before we talk about the actual aesthetics, I do need to dish out a medal to the Titan for some of its well-thought out design ideas for any pro gamer out there. Starting with that thickness and heft (yes, it's really is 7.94 pounds) — MSI understood the assignment that this is a desktop replacement and packed it full of what's needed for almost superhuman thermal management (for a laptop). Yes, the fans do sound like a jumbo jet when pushing it to the limit, but it's the best of the cards you're dealt in this situation! On top of that, the desktop convenience extends to the port array, as important sockets like HDMI and Ethernet adorn the back, while there's a good versatility across the other sides (such as a warmly welcomed full-size SD card slot). And finally, a lot has been said about giving gamers the opportunity to expand their laptops. While we haven't gone full-blown modular just yet, the extra SSD slots with PCIe Gen 5 support are significant for expanding capacity while keeping the speeds up. Oh, and shoutout to that phenomenal Cherry MX mechanical keyboard up top. The keys have a nice subtle dish to them for your fingers to fall into, while the tactile switch impact is unmatched in the laptop space. This is an intervention, MSI. You can tick boxes, and that's a good thing — I don't want that to be forgotten. But we're giving consumer advice here, and I've got to be real: there are two big reasons why you shouldn't buy this. And no, neither are the laughable battery life or webcam. Let's just agree these don't matter in a desktop replacement system like this. MSI gives with one hand and takes away with the other. That's annoying because given the ridiculous cost you're paying here (more on that later), There are three key issues going on. First, that haptic touchpad. Looks great with the RGB illumination and if my MacBook Pro was anything to go by, solid state pads are great at giving you that tactility without that spongey wobble. On the Titan, there's a nice clicky snap, but gestures are hit and miss and click response is too slow. Second, the speakers. If you're going to have the fans kick up a storm, let those social gaming moments drown out the noise with big volume from those speakers. Not only are they unfortunately pretty tinny, but they're far too quiet. And finally (most subjectively), that dragon artwork on the front of mine? Pretty cringe. I won't hold this against the 18 HX in my review, as you can get the plain one which solves that problem. On top of that, I applaud MSI for trying to do something different — the texture of the 3D artwork atop the lid is addictive to run your fingers over. But I would never ever feel comfortable bringing this out with me, as I learnt after being laughed at a fair few times in my local hometown pub for whipping it out. Maybe keep the special editions a little more subtle. Here I was thinking $4,499 for the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 was crazy expensive. But it turns out that when it comes to 18-inch 5090 laptops, it could very well be the steal of the year. I won't blather on too much in this section, because every time I do I get more annoyed at that $7,000 price tag. Yep, you read that right — the cost of the special edition model I have is seven grand. But how much does that price go down if it's the non-special edition? Well, looking at retailers, around about $250 gets cut off the price, as we've seen the identical spec with none of the dragon stuff go for $6,750. No matter which way you look, this is an insane price tag that I cannot ignore. Then of course, we've got Nvidia talking about raising the prices of its GPUs due to the economic uncertainty, so they may go even higher! This is just an astronomical price to pay, and one that given the combo breaker strengths of DLSS 4 and multi-frame gen can bring to uber smooth laptop gaming on lower-spec laptops, I wouldn't recommend anyone pay. The epitome of excess, and the image you'd find on the Wikipedia page for the saying 'more money than sense.' This is a beasty gaming laptop with a monstrous price tag that makes it good on paper, but not something I'd tell anyone to go out and buy. If 5090 is your thing, the Strix Scar 18 is better value for money (nearly $2,000 less) without compromising anymore than a few frames per second. But you could legitimately get away with RTX 5080 and 5070 systems, save yourself a ton of money and still get shockingly good frame rates with all that AI trickery. Don't get me wrong. The MSI Titan 18 HX is not exactly taking your money and setting it on fire. It is a mightily powerful system, but definitely not the smartest purchase — certainly not the best gaming laptop you can buy.
Gizmodo
05-05-2025
- Gizmodo
MSI Titan 18 HX Review: Titanic Doesn't Even Begin to Describe This Gaming Laptop
Let's get one thing out of the way before we start this review. MSI's Titan 18 HX is a hulking, powerful, and all-around excessive gaming laptop, starting at $5,279 for its lowest configuration. It demands much more from your wallet if you want the best possible specs. It's also a similar price to what you would pay for a full-sized, pre-built desktop with all the fixings. The Titan 18 HX is an ultra-expensive desktop replacement, and when I say that, I mean it in the whole sense of what that term implies—it's so massive in size and cost, and yet it is the closest you'll get to having a desktop tower you can schlep from room to room. MSI Titan 18 HX This behemoth-sized laptop offers intense performance in a great chassis with excellent keyboard and display. It also costs well over $5,000. Pros Performance is great for both gaming and other intensive tasks Performance is great for both gaming and other intensive tasks Mechanical keyboard feels incredible Mechanical keyboard feels incredible Nice screen with good brightness Nice screen with good brightness Sound is solid and loud for this size of device Cons Terrible battery life Terrible battery life Per-key RGB isn't very bright Per-key RGB isn't very bright Astronomical (and rising) price If you can spend the necessary amount of dough on this nearly eight-pound behemoth, the Titan 18 HX can be the mobile PC for whatever you need, so long as you can do it in less than two hours when away from a plug. It feels luxurious to use with its excellent mechanical keyboard, and it looks good with a quality mini-LED, 4K display. However, you should know that—inevitably—you'll be pushing the settings on your favorite games and then find the performance ceiling. Reaching the max of what you can do at 60 fps on the Titan 18 HX is akin to the feeling of driving 80 mph on a highway without a car in sight, then screeching to a halt with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Even with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, this gigantic laptop is packing, though there's a limit to what a laptop GPU can accomplish. That's not a point against the Titan 18 HX, but it's something to keep in mind alongside that eye-watering price tag. With the latest top-end Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX CPU and RTX 5090 GPU, and 64GB of DDR5 RAM, I found the Titan 18 HX can meet just under the benchmarks of a full tower with the latest components. To display those graphics, the laptop sports a 4K mini-LED display with clean visuals and nice, high brightness. It's still prone to reflections in direct light, so keep that in mind if you intend to take this beast outdoors. (It already weighs as much as a small dog, so why not play fetch with it?) At the top end you can spec it with 6TB of storage, enough for—at the very least—a majority chunk of your Steam library. I've never felt so spoiled when using a laptop. For the price you're paying for this device, you better feel like you're living in the lap of luxury. With the near-top-end specs in my review unit, the MSI Titan 18 HX totals to a whopping $6,379. If you really have no care for expenses, you could go for the even more expensive Dragon Edition Norse Myth edition with a cover that includes embossed Nordic runes and a killer image of a leering dragon. Unless this machine is something you plan to take to work, which may incite more questions than you're comfortable with. It costs a dragon's hoard, but MSI's prices have gone up, even in the midst of our testing for this review. MSI's other products, like its Claw 8 AI+ have seen price increases over the last few weeks, and the Titan 18 HX is no exception. MSI did not respond to questions about whether these price hikes have anything to do with Trump tariffs. Either way, it's clear MSI isn't alone feeling the pressure of the White House's obsession with import taxes. At this price, the Titan 18 HX has to be a perfect specimen if I were to recommend it at all to anybody, even those who can afford it. With these specs, the device needs a quality thermal system in place, and MSI has managed the heat with surprising grace. You can bet your keister this device spits out some hot air, enough that my mouse hand could get extra sweaty next to the side exhaust. The rest of the airflow blasts out the rear vents. After playing with the laptop for around 15 minutes, the area surrounding the function row keys was burning hot, enough that if you leave your fingers there, it stretches from uncomfortable into painful-to-touch territory. But the Titan 18 HX still feels comfortable when you actually use it. The laptop's thermals, which include a vapor chamber and dedicated copper heat pipe for the SSD (it has four SSD slots, though one is PCIe Gen 5 and the rest are Gen 4), keep heat off the palmrest and away from the WASD keys where most players will rest their sensitive fingertips. Playing on this laptop itself is a joy. The Titan 18 HX sports a full mechanical keyboard with Cherry switches. Each key clacks with a subdued clap that's not too stiff but not light enough to accidentally press the wrong key at the wrong time. If I had one small complaint, it's that the per-key RGB lighting isn't all that bright or eye-catching unless you're sitting in a truly dark room. The seamless touchpad uses haptics, which use motors to simulate the click of a regular mechanical pad, feels on point without that too-smooth glassy texture found on other laptops. MSI claims its device can draw 270W of power to both the CPU and GPU for gaming tasks. This 'Max Boost' setting can also push 200W to the CPU exclusively, which will increase performance in intensive tasks. All that means is that the Titan 18 HX manages to put a good deal of power toward the components that need it most for gaming. Perhaps what surprised me most is just how effective an Intel's Core Ultra 9 285HX is as a gaming CPU. In benchmarks, it manages to meet or, in some cases, beat the performance of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K desktop-level CPU. Intel's latest desktop processors weren't exactly stellar on release last year—especially for gaming purposes, but the fact this laptop CPU is comparable to desktops at all indicates Intel made some good strides with the top-end Arrow Lake series of chips. Outside of gaming, the Titan 18 HX hit the mark for more intense rendering tasks. It managed to meet sub-1 minute benchmarks for our tests rendering a scene in Blender, which is practically equivalent to what we get on high-end desktop PCs. The Titan 18 HX was similarly fast in our 4K to 1080p video encoding tests. As for gaming, that's where things get slightly more complicated. The in-game benchmark results were stellar in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, where the Titan 18 HX managed to get 60 fps at 4K with ultra settings without any kind of upscaling. It was a similar story with games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Black Myth Wukong. However, there is a performance ceiling, and if you were hoping to max out every single ray tracing setting in very demanding games like Marvel's Spider-Man II, you will find a wall that will dunk your fps below 50 and into the low 40s in some intensive moments. This is where you could technically make use of Nvidia's oft-touted multi-frame gen capabilities with DLSS 4. This essentially inserts multiple 'generated' frames in between each frame that's actually rendered by the PC. With a host of technical trickery, this boosts your frames per second so 50 or 60 fps can work into the low 100s on 2x frame gen, or upwards of 200 fps with 4x settings. Multi-frame gen is not a panacea for low framerates. You still want closer to 50 or 60 fps before you enable it to avoid graphics artifacts that will spoil the picture. It's especially not ideal if you're planning to mostly focus on multiplayer, as frame gen will necessarily increase latency, which will impact how the PC tracks your mouse movement between frames. That being said, I wouldn't worry about your framerates in most multiplayer shooters, whether that's Marvel Rivals or Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. The laptop version of the RTX 5090 is a top-of-the-line card, and to be frank, there is no other consumer-level card you can buy that is more powerful than it. The GPU will top out most games, but even then there's a cap to how much you can honestly expect from it. And still, even if you have the bodybuilder physique to hold this eight-pound behemoth aloft for more than a few seconds, it can't be your everyday carry laptop. MSI can't escape the age-old problem with gaming laptops: the battery. Off a charger, on balanced performance settings through Windows 11 and MSI's Center software, I couldn't even make it two hours without needing to plug it in. It's far worse when gaming, and you'll be lucky to get more than an hour of time before the battery runs out. The Titan 18 HX is a desktop replacement, after all, and that demands you use it from your desk or at least close enough to some power source. There's only so much you can expect from a laptop, but the Titan 18 HX represents the top end of what's technically possible with modern hardware. When the only Razer Blade 16 configuration currently for sale costs $4,900 with an RTX 5090 in a thinner chassis, paying upwards of $5,000 for the heftier frame and larger (though non-OLED) display doesn't sound as ludicrous. We can expect the upcoming Razer Blade 18 or other large laptops that have yet to see the light of day (which is another factor of Trump's trade war) to be priced at or just below MSI's humongous device. MSI's Titan 18 HX is close enough to a supercharged pre-built desktop I could even consider it an alternative for a full gaming rig, especially if you have need for just one device you can plug into your TV or drag to your bedroom for whatever gaming needs. Though as tariff woes continue to increase costs and decrease availability, I wouldn't blame you for looking at the Titan 18 HX as an idol of excess. I'm not the religious type, and idolatry is the kind of sin that may be a worthy price of admission for such a powerful piece of tech.
